UCB connects with Crohn’s community through scholarship program
April 6, 2009 – 1:23 pm by Steven Niles
In our March issue, we named UCB Inc.’s Crohn’s disease drug Cimzia as Best New Medicine. Among the reasons why was the significant and innovative marketing effort behind the product, including the Crohn’s & Me unbranded disease awareness site created by The CementWorks and Heartbeat Digital. That article, posted online here, discusses the “faux community” concept Heartbeat Digital employs in the site to create the feeling of community without the risks of open-ended social networking. That concept was recently critiqued by John Mack at his Pharma Marketing Blog, where he questioned whether users could truly be considered to be engaged by a Website if there is no real give and take. As he puts it, “Engagement means to me allowing users to engage YOU in conversation by submitting comments and getting comments back from YOU and from other site visitors.”
When words like “false advertising” and “less than optimal transparency” are raised in the post comments, the implication is made that the site is somehow fooling users into thinking they’re more “engaged” than they really are. I think the typical end user is more sophisticated than that, though. If they’re using the site for any length of time, they must appreciate what’s being offered, even if the presentation is more monologue than dialogue. The moment they stop getting something out of the site, they’ll tune out. And as John concedes, “Of course, agencies must work under the constraints imposed upon them by their clients and good luck to them convincing pharma people to accept the risks of doing that. Maybe faux is the best we can hope for.”
Speaking of the client, after a delay brought on by legal-department wrangling, we were finally able to speak with UCB about Cimzia. My conversation with David W. Robinson, VP/general manager, U.S. Immunology Business Unit, UCB Inc., is here.
The big point that stood out to me involved that word again: engaged. As you’ll read in the Q&A, UCB has engaged with the Crohn’s disease community in yet another way. For the past three years, UCB has sponsored a Crohn’s disease scholarship program, in which a physician panel selects 30 people with Crohn’s disease each year to whom UCB provides scholarships of up to $10,000 each.
“I have people ask me all the time, wow that’s a lot of money to basically put out there into the community for which your not getting anything in return,” Mr. Robinson says. “I guess that’s the case, but you know this is an opportunity for us to give back to the community and work closely with a group of physicians.”
Tags: best new medicine, Cimzia, Crohn's disease, faux community, social networking, UCB
